The Heart Goes Last Read Free Page A

Their car is the only barrier between them and gang rape, and not just for her, she says, considering what’s out there roaming around in the night with no pants on. She has a point.
    What should he do to pull them out of this ditch? Whatever he has to. There used to be a lot of jobs licking ass in the corporate world, but those asses are now out of reach. Banking’s left the region, manufacturing too; the digital genius outfits have migrated to fatter pastures in other, more prosperous locations and nations. Service industries used to be held out as a promise of salvation, but those jobs too are scarce, at least around here. One of Stan’s uncles, dead now, had been a chef, back when cheffing was a good gig because the top slice was still living onshore, and high-end restaurants were glamorous. But not today, when those kinds of customers are floating around on tax-free sea platforms just outside the offshore limit. People that rich take their own chefs with them.
    Another midnight, another parking lot. It’s the third one tonight; they’ve had to flee the previous two. Now they’re so on edge they can’t get back to sleep.
    “Maybe we should try the slots,” says Charmaine. They’d done that once, and come out ten dollars to the good. It wasn’t much, but at least they hadn’t lost it all.
    “No way,” says Stan. “We can’t afford the risk, we need the money for gas.”
    “Have some gum, honey,” says Charmaine. “Relax a little. Go to sleep. Your brain’s too active.”
    “What fucking brain?” says Stan. There’s a hurt silence: he shouldn’t take it out on her. Dickhead, he tells himself. None of this is her fault.
    Tomorrow he’ll eat his pride. He’ll hunt down Conor, help him out with whatever scam he’s engaged in, join the criminal underclass. He has an idea about where to start looking. Or maybe he’ll just hit Con up for a loan, supposing Con is flush. That shoe used to be on the other foot – it was Conor who’d done the hitting up when they were younger, and before Conor had figured out how to game the system – but he’ll need to avoid reminding Conor of their former positions now.
    Or maybe he should remind him. Con owes him. He could say Payback time or something. Not that he’s got any leverage. But still, Con’s his brother. And he is Con’s brother. Which must be worth something.

II    |    Pitch

Brew
    It wasn’t a good night. Charmaine did try for a comforting note: “Let’s concentrate on the things we have,” she’d said into the moist, stinky darkness of the car. “We have each other.” She’d started to reach her arm from the back seat into the front, in order to touch Stan, to reassure him, but then she thought better of it. Stan might take it the wrong way, he’d want to get into the back seat with her, he’d want them to make love, and that could be so uncomfortable with the two of them squashed in together because her head would get jammed up against the car door and she’d start to slide sideways off the seat, with Stan working away at her as if she was a job he had to get done really fast, and her head going bump bump bump. It was not inspirational.
    Also she can never concentrate, because what if someone snuck up on them from the outside? Stan would be caught bare-assed, scrambling over into the front seat and trying to start the car while a gang of thugs bashed at the windows, trying to get at her. Though not her, first and foremost. What they’d want would be the truly valuable thing, which was the car. She’d be an afterthought, once they’d done away with Stan.
    There’s been a number of former car owners flung out onto the gravel, right around here; knifed, heads crushed in, bleeding to death. No one bothers with those cases any more, with finding out who did it, because that would take time, and only rich people can afford to have police. All those things we never appreciated until we didn’t have them, as Grandma Win would say,